Not PC

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Friday, May 20, 2011

Borrow and hope

I can’t do it.

At a time when the NZ govt has never been more in debt, I can’t bring myself to write about a Finance Minister delivering a Budget based on nothing but borrow and hope—on the hope that something will come along to pull the economy out of its depression (“The economy will improve!” – “How?” – “Somehow!”), and on a plan to continue spending billions more than they’ve got for as long as they can old office.

I can’t even get angry at the incredible irresponsibility of it. Just depressed that you lot keep voting for the scum who keep digging this hole deeper every year.

Thursday, May 19, 2011

‘Perigo!’ show tonight: Peter Leitch

Our all-time favourite Knight, The Mad Butcher, believes fairy tales come true and tells the most inquisitive fairy of them all why he wears so many rings, how he once thought rings grew on trees; why he believes in Key but not Brash, and how he's determined to skewer the Big C.

All without drawing breath.

A not-to-be-missed encounter between salt-of-the-earth and head-in-the-clouds. An improbable but enchanting finale to this first series of Perigo!

Who am I? [updated]

I have been a politician of one sort or another since I was elected to the Birkenhead Borough Council back in 1977 .

I first entered Parliament as a protégé of Rob Muldoon, and was hand-picked by him to take over his popular Sunday afternoon radio show when he retired.

As Minister of Police I amalgamated traffic officers and police, at a stroke turning jackbooted moustachioed morons into policemen and policemen into glorified revenue collectors. And in a knee jerk reaction to a tragedy, rather than correct the problems within my portfolio that allowed the tragedy to occur, I put huge expense and inconvenience on law-abiding firearms owners—who were never ever the problem.

In my first term as Mayor of Auckland I promoted a motorway through Remuera, attacked Asian immigrants, and generally made myself so unpopular I made the dishwater-wet bran-flake Dick Hubbard electable.

In my second term, I ran on a platform of keeping rates down and then proceeded to raise them every year I was there. I promised to keep spending in check, but instead my council spent like a drunken sailor on a Singapore shore leave while borrowing heavily to keep the party going. In fact, under my stewardship my council borrowed more than any other council in the country.

I finished this term so unpopular I managed to make the insane self-abuser Len Brown electable, and left ratepayers in debt to the tune of nearly one billion dollars.

I am now the ACT Party candidate for the party’s flagship seat in Parliament, running a platform promoting fiscal responsibility and opposing this government’s unsustainable spending and borrowing.

NOT PJ: One Mississippi, No Mississippi

This week Bernard Darnton sails down the Mississippi on a raft of bad news.

Nature’s relentless might is on show again, this time in the Mississippi River basin. The river’s catchment is vast - nearly half of the United States - and the water’s all shown up at once. Whether you count in metric or imperial units, there is a cubic shitload of water coming down that river.

The situation is so unusual that it makes an introductory ethics class sound realistic. An out-of-control railcar carrying 80 billion tonnes of water is careering towards New Orleans, population 1.2 million. If you could push a fat man onto the track and divert the railcar to Morgan City, population 12,000, would you do it?

In the ethics class three quarters of the class say it’s wrong to throw fat people at railcars and one quarter say it’s wrong to let the railcar crash into a million people when you could prevent it. Then they argue for the rest of the class about “normative ethics,” “consequentialist ethics,” and so on. Nobody, fat or otherwise, actually dies.

If you’re in charge of the Morganza Spillway however, where the Army Corps of Engineers keeps 125 caged railcar-diverting fatties, the choice of whose homes to destroy is real. And they’ve decided that Billy Bunter is going to take one for the team.

Right now, the control structures designed to contain the Mississippi are more stretched than this railcar-crashing-into-fat-man analogy. The last time an analogy was this stretched was during the flood of 1973, when the Old River Control Structure was compared to King Canute trying to hold back the tide by getting every lard-arse and chubby-cheeks in Humberside to line up along the beach. It was feared then that a torrent of ridiculous wordplay could completely undermine understanding and change the course of writing forever.

The Old River Control Structure, a set of gates that control the distribution of river water, and the Morganza Spillway are not just floodgates, there to divert water after heavy rain. Their real purpose is to keep the Mississippi flowing down its existing channel, even though it would rather jump its banks and take a shorter, steeper route to the ocean.

Over millennia, the Mississippi has whipped around like a fire hose, with its delta moving across from the Florida panhandle almost to Mexico and back again as old channels silt up and new channels are eroded. The river no longer has any desire to follow the current channel through to New Orleans and is fighting to switch course to the west, down the Atchafalaya River and into the Gulf of Mexico.

Without the control structures the area wouldn’t just flood, the river would change its course permanently as it scoured its new path to the sea. If the Old River Control Structure was to fail - something that almost happened in 1973 - it would make the chaos of Hurricane Katrina look like a perfectly scripted tour of a clockwork factory.

If the Atchafalaya captured the Mississippi and the lower river ran dry the effects would be staggering. The Port of South Louisiana extends for 90 km along the river’s banks and handles the imports and exports for 33 states - over 200 million tonnes of cargo a year. The river banks are home to any number of oil refineries that need fresh water to operate. If the river became un-navigable the cost would start at $300 million a day.

Battling the Mississippi seems like an impossible task. The engineers are fighting geography, gravity, and statistics. One day the 500- or thousand-year flood will come. In the long run it’s bound to happen. And in the long run it would probably make more sense to let the river follow its natural inclination and let industry relocate along the new water course. But it’s just never the right day to pull the pin on millions of livelihoods and billions of dollars worth of infrastructure.

The current flood is bigger than the flood of 1973 but the control structures are in better shape and have been extended to spread the load so they will probably hold. Tune in next week to discover whether the Old River Control Structure is a remarkable feat of engineering and a testament to human ingenuity and grit in the implacable face of nature—or if it was a vast, expensive and futile government boondoggle, doomed to failure when pitted against irresistible forces.

Bernard Darnton sails down a river of metaphor every Thursday here at NOT PC.

GUEST POST: Ben Bernanke. Idiot?

We've often called Ben Bernanke an idiot, dumb, ignorant, and a whole other variety of adjectives to demean his intelligence and understanding of the economy. Though these words are convenient ways to label a nemesis, they are completely inaccurate.

Ben Bernanke is an extremely intelligent man. Few morons can graduate from the MIT Ph.D. economics program. Perhaps some graduates are dishonest or idiot savants, but in sheer brain power, they are on the far right tail of the IQ distribution.

However, what Bernanke lacks is not intelligence - it is a much more basic human characteristic: humility. The Fed chairman's intelligence has deluded him in to believing the economy can be centrally planned through complex equations and statistics. This isn't his failing alone. Many highly intelligent people, especially in physics, chemistry, and mathematics, lack the same humility when it comes to social issues. Researchers in these fields solve extremely complex systems, and as a result, become deluded in to thinking economic problems can be solved in the same way.

Unfortunately for them, society is vastly more complex than a controlled lab experiment; the economy is pure chaos with millions of forces shaping it.

Scientists and mathematicians often falsely believe the world is just another equation to solve. Usually the smarter the individual, the more they believe in man's capacity to plan and shape the world (even Einstein had communist tendencies). If we get the equation right, we can take the economy to some perfect equilibrium.

Yes, human beings are highly intelligent. We can build skyscrapers, fly planes, cure diseases, and even explore outer space. With these accomplishments achieved, why not centrally plan society through mathematics and the scientific method as well? Unfortunately for us, it just doesn't work that way. The economy is a far too complex system. Several equations cannot capture the simultaneous reactions of six billion people around the world to a million different economic events.

QUOTE OF THE DAY: “The difference between rich and poor is more than it should be.”

“ I do believe that the difference between rich and poor … is more than it should be. ‘Should be’ by what standard? By the standard of the free market. In a free market the difference would be reduced, not because the rich become poorer but because the poor would get richer. “I believe what hampers and distorts the distribution of wealth and salaries … is government. “Government policies damage the poor—particularly the ambitious poor, the entrepreneurial poor, the smart poor—much more than they damage the middle class or the wealthy.” - Yaron Brook, from the Q&A of his talk ‘In Defense of Finance’ [6:35]

In Defense of Finance (part 2 of 2). Dr. Brook ends by exposing the deepest source of hostility toward the financial industry: the widespread hatred of the profit motive.

GUEST POST: Watt a Genius

The first guest post here from our newly-minted (ir)regular columnist who we’ve dubbed, for reasons that will become apparent over subsequent weeks, InsideTheWall.

The release of the Atlas Shrugged: Part 1 movie found me reading the perfect accompanying book.

Called Great Inventors & Their Inventions, the first biographical account is of James Watt, the man who turned Newcomen's early attempts at a steam engine (at the time known as the Fire Engine) into a working, reliable and powerful engine that we all heard about in school.

Not only does the story tell of the money he spent and borrowed, the extraordinary graft, the years of trials and failures–it also tells a story of applied genius, of one man against the mob (a story which of course we didn't hear in school) and how he overcame all the hurdles to achieve eventual recognition and success, bringing a new thing into existence that transformed men’s lives.

So here's a long story short. The story began with him designing his engine simply to pump water out of mines. But he quickly saw there were hundreds more applications for it—particularly in mills grinding corn and wheat which at that time were powered by either wind or water, making them either unreliable or unable to be located away from a water course.

The working people of these mills didn’t see the increased production of cheaper food that he saw however; they saw only a danger to their incomes, and began to protest at the installation of Watt’s new engines, often quite violently. Not for them the labour-saving utility of such a powerful and never-get-tired contraption, one that would eventually make everyone richer.

“It seems [wrote Watt at the time] these people are determined to be masters of us. To put a stop to fire-engine mills, because they come in competition with water mills, would be as absurd as to put a stop to canals, because they interfere with those who carry things by wagon. The argument that men are deprived of a work would put a stop to the use of all machines whereby labour is saved. Carry out this argument, and we must do away with water mills themselves, and go back again to grinding corn by hand labour.”

So strong were the feelings against Watt's machine that when he and his business partner built a sixty thousand dollar (do your own conversion into pounds and add inflation) working mill of their own it was deliberately burnt to the ground.

But all was not lost, the working mill lasted long enough that it created interest from industrialists from Britain to France, from Italy to America. The Luddites lost! Watt won. And so did we.

So successful did his engine prove to be that opposition changed from destroying his products to stealing them. Unscrupulous mine owners refused to pay for the machines that had raised their production. And perfidious competitors stole and used his patents unpaid, and attempted to have his ownership of them stripped—asking Parliament to do down the very man who had given them their chance at (unearned) piles of money.

"We are in the state of the old Roman [wrote Watt] who was found guilty of raising better crops than his neighbours, and was ordered to bring before the assembly of the people his instruments of husbandry, and tell them of his arts. He complied, and when he had done, said, 'These, O Romans, are the instruments of our art, but I cannot bring into the forum the labours, the sweats, the watchings, the anxieties, the cares which produce the crops.' So everyone sees the reward which we may yet probably receive from our labours; but few consider the price we have paid for that reward, which is by no means certain."

“Not to perpetuate a name which must endure while the peaceful arts flourish, but to shew that mankind have learned to know those who best deserve their gratitude. The King, His Ministers, and many of the Nobles and Commoners of the Realm raised this monument to JAMES WATT who, directing the force of an original Genius, early exercised in philosophic research, to the improvement of the Steam Engine, enlarged the resources of his Country, increased the power of Man, and rose to an eminent place among the most illustrious followers of science and the real benefactors of the World.

DOWN TO THE DOCTOR’S: Child Abusers of the Mind Confronted On Steps Of Parliament

NZ HERALD: “School Hikoi Arrives At Parliament” – The merging of six state schools in Kawerau into three is cause for a protest involving school children and teachers, met by a group of MPs..

THE PROBLEM: Central government wants to close two primary schools and one intermediate school in Kawerau. The principal of the intermediate school claims the community and their local council want to keep the intermediate school open. There were two telling passages in this news article: First, a quote from the principal: “You've got decile 1 kids sitting here. We clothe them, we feed them, we look after them.” Second: School principal Daryl Aim told Mr McClay there were two distinct New Zealands: one was symbolised by the kids at the protest, the other by the line of private school students were passed by the protest, resplendent in their "beautiful blazers." In my book, it is the responsibility of parents - not schools - to feed and adequately clothe children. And it is sad but not surprising that the principal of a state school sees “two distinct New Zealands”; unfortunately the government persists in funding politically correct one-size-fits-all schools that are destined to fail parents and children. The “other” New Zealand is the one that these very children from Kawerau could enjoy if the government could just get out of the way.

THE SOLUTION: Listen to the parents, teachers and local council in Kawerau. Let them keep open every school in the area if that is their wish. Give the parents of all children in the area vouchers for education costs, starting in term three of this year, and issue shares in ownership of each school. Give parents one block of shares for each child they have at a particular school. When a child leaves school, the parents may retain their shares or sell them on to incoming parents or anyone else. The shareholders can elect a board and chief executive. They can demand a return on their investment. Fees may be charged to attend a school. The curriculum is driven by parents and the local community. Local businesses are allowed to sponsor uniforms, courses, meals and anything else they like—in return for a tax credit. Separate school from state in this way (or any other way), and there will be no further need for marches to Wellington—which are a massive waste of time in any case as politicians never listen to what taxpayers have to say anyway. In short, get the child molesters from Molesworth Street out of the education industry.

Climate agit-prop in the Listeria

From: Rupert Wyndham [mailto: xxxxx.xxxx] Sent: Saturday, 14 May 2011 To: letters@listerner.co.nzSubject: Attn. Editor Dear Ms. Stirling I am a visitor to New Zealand, and only yesterday had sight of your 14 May edition of the New Zealand Listener with its entertainingly fanciful lead story, accompanied by appropriately lurid graphics. Since this is a topic which raises much controversy, let me try and see if I can encapsulate in a few lines what it is that you would wish you readers to believe. You propose, it would seem, that marginal increases in the concentrations of what is no more than a trace gas, amounting in total not to 10% of the earth's atmosphere, not even to 5% - nay, not even to 1%. can bring about cataclysmic changes in global climate. So, what exactly is the percentage concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere? Why, to be sure, it is a gasping, asphyxiating 1/27th part of a single percentage point. But even that's not the complete picture, is it? After all, as someone (such as you) who has addressed the data for herself will know, even human induced climate change proselytisers acknowledge that, by itself, the radiative potential of CO2 (vanishingly small anyway) fails to account for the "scenarios" promoted by them and by unquestioning and compliant organs of the media - such, indeed, as The New Zealand Listener. So, to get over this this little inconvenience, what should be done? Why, to be sure, invoke another critical life affirming compound (dihydrogen oxide) to provide a "positive forcing", thereby adding to the so-called greenhouse effect. Regrettably, the very scientists (well, anyway, let's call them that for the sake of convenience) can't actually tell you whether the forcing resulting from atmospheric water vapour is positive (so allegedly bringing warming) or negative (so allegedly bringing the opposite). Clouds, for example, have a cooling effect. Have these 'climate scientists' with their rinky dinky computers ever managed to incorporate them in their so-named General Circulation Models? Answer - the heck they have! And neither still is that the whole story, is it? For, while CO2 might have some modest radiative potential, that potential is governed by a relationship to concentration that is logarithmic not linear. In simple layman's terms, the more you shove in, increasingly less do you get out. In other words, the system is self limiting - well, well, fancy that! So, to you, let me pose a multi-part question. Even at first sight, does this seem plausible? Possible? Or, is it, perhaps, just stark barking? Finally, let's pause briefly on your Gotham City phantasmagoric cover photo. This, from its appearance, could quite easily be a fictional montage designed, of course, to promote a propagandist scaremongering agenda to an ill informed public. In any event, and as far as New Zealand is concerned, as a journalistic professional dealing with a matter of major public importance, you personally should be fully aware that the Flinders University, Adelaide, trans-Pacific tidal buoy project, after ten years of careful monitoring, was wound up a year or two ago after failing to find evidence of any increase whatsoever in rates of sea level rise. These data have since been confirmed by satellite readings - much disliked by AGW propagandists, since they usually undermine the party line. Neither are such contra-indicative findings confined to the S. Pacific. If, in the face of such scientific findings, you have published your story, then you are guilty of lying. If you were unaware of such data, you are guilty of professional negligence, and I speak as a one time journalist myself in publications somewhat more elevated (or, at any rate, more globally celebrated) than the New Zealand Listener. Actually, let's be candid. Your piece is not journalism at all, is it? It is mere agit-prop. In essence, as between what you have published (and, I suspect, publish routinely) and what your counterparts disseminated in Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia, Maoist China any difference is negligible. Rupert Wyndham

In other words, it plans to hack a path back to surplus based on wishful thinking about the future, some money saved by some magical Welfare for Working Families changes that will (by some magic) benefit most and hurt some not a lot, and by a magical public service initiative that will involve telling the public service in a very loud voice to spend a lot less money.*

Clearly, a lot rests on that wishful thinking. And the loud voice.

Here’s a cartoon from 1933** featuring the then Prime Minister and Finance Minister. Perhaps someone should pin it up on this Prime Minister’s wall.

* Thanks to Lyndon Hood for the quips. He does good quip. ** Cartoon from the 1935 ‘Farming First’ magazine shows then NZ Prime Minister Forbes and his Finance Minister Gordon Coates.

Monday, May 16, 2011

ECONOMICS FOR REAL PEOPLE: Global Financial Crisis

Tomorrow evening our friends at the Auckland Uni Economics Group tackle a subject that should interest everyone: the Global Financial Crisis—an event of such so importance it’s already become capitalised. This, from their mail-out about tomorrow night:

At this Tuesday night’s meeting we will begin looking at what is often termed the global financial crisis. It is not surprising that the ‘bust’ resulted in many asking what caused the downturn. But …

… are the true culprits being identified and placed under the spotlight?

Or are innocent parties are being blamed?

Will stimulus, quantitative easing, bailouts and too-big-to-fail get us out of The Great Recession?

Or will they only make things worse?

These are crucial questions—for what is currently being decided will affect every single one of us for many years to come.

Smith to campers: “Go, Move, Shift” [updated]

“Freedom camping” has just been made less free. Or, by Thursday, will be—with new powers given to the wielders of council clip boards to harass, fine and prosecute people doing nothing more than enjoying the great outdoors in a mobile home.

But it’s par for the course. The puritans are at the gate, teetolitarians making everything illegal that hasn’t already been made compulsory. You can’t smoke in public; you can’t drink outside; you can’t put up signs outside that the puritans don’t like—or in places the puritans don’t want you to. Bit by bit, law by law, infringement by infringement, the great outdoors and much of our freedom is being shut down by and who seem of one mind that if there’s any danger of someone, somewhere, enjoying themselves in a way that isn’t mandated then there ought to be a law against it forthwith.

“New Zealand has an environmental problem … our environmental problem is freedom campers, and the government has decided to Do Something and eradicate them. You can see why: freedom campers are messy, untidy, and occasionally leave their shit lying around for other people to tread in … problems [that] could be solved, by (for example) providing free public facilities, backed by fines for pollution. Instead, they've decided to enable and encourage councils to ban camping, with instant spot fines. You'd almost think they were more interested in pushing people to use private, for profit campgrounds than in solving the actual problem... But while this will lead to tidier roadsides and public reserves, it is also a massive attack on the rights of New Zealanders. Its not just foreign tourists who camp in public space; these sorts of camping holidays are a long kiwi tradition. National would outlaw that …”

Perigo! Show 8: Don Brash, Round Two

Last time he appeared on the Perigo! show with host Lindsay Perigo, Don Brash was on the verge of ousting Rodney Hide, who had single-handedly destroyed the ACT Party, and taking over the party himself in a bloodless coup—putting him front and centre where the ACT Party should have been along: criticising this government for its irresponsible timidity in tackling the biggest financial crisis and the largest govt deficit in this country’s history.

So now that Don Brash is leading the Act Party, where’s he going to lead it to?

As the son of a preacher-man what does he now think about God and the Universe, Gay-Bashing Banks and Rodney?

And how can he preach fiscal responsibility at the same time as pushing the profligate former mayor John Banks forward as ACT’s candidate in their anchor seat of Epsom?

GUEST POST: A Counterfactual Look at Inflation [updated]

A Counterfactual Look at Inflation

When I mention central bank-induced inflation [by either the N.Z. Reserve Bank or the U.S. Federal Reserve], I often get the response, "Inflation is really low. You're wrong about ‘The Fed’." And I'm sure many of you have heard the same comments. But this view does not consider the counterfactuals and what-ifs of monetary policy. Ironically, when the Fed wants to defend itself, we're always asked to imagine how much worse the crisis would have been without them. We are never asked to imagine a better scenario without the Fed.

Prior to the creation of the Federal Reserve, deflation was a fairly common occurrence in the business cycle. When a boom builds, inflationary expansion hits the market. After a bubble pops, the economy contracts, often causing deflation. Despite the propaganda, deflation isn't that bad.

One common argument against deflation is falling wages. However, most economists agree that there is some resistance to downward pressure on wages. Have you noticed that wage cuts rarely ever happen in the private sector? Companies either squeeze more effort out of fewer employees or they fire people. Outside the government, furlough days and wage cuts are practically unseen.

Individuals are weird about their pay on the margins. Even a small wage cut will infuriate workers, while a 3% raise to meet inflation will make them very happy -although their purchasing power has remained the same. The disgruntled workforce is usually not worth the savings.

The primary difference between the negative effects of inflation and deflation are who benefits. With inflation, the giant corporations get the low interest rates first and expand before inflation filters through the economy. The guy living on a fixed income or collecting the same salary suffers the most. With deflation, the companies take the hit, but the workers now have higher purchasing power with their salary. Of course if deflation is too rapid or too prolonged, the company will see a significant drop in revenues leading to fewer workers. And that's where problems can arise. But something like a 3 to 4% deflation for a year or two isn't the end of the world. And an even milder deflation isn't a big reason for concern. During the 1800s - a period of amazing growth for the United States - there were some very long deflationary periods.

With this in mind, the topic of 2 to 3% inflation is only a discussion about the tip of the iceberg. The real question is, "What would the CPI be without the Fed?" It's hard to say for sure, but it probably wouldn't be 2 or 3% inflation. It would rather be something like 5 or 6% deflation. If you look at it through this lens, then the Fed is already inflating at 7 to 9% inflation per year. Furthermore, this means things could get out of hand quickly. If the natural contracting of the economy ends, we could suddenly see a rapid pickup in inflation where these numbers are openly evident.

Justin Lahart with the Wall Street Journal wrestles with the definition of ‘inflation’ in his article “Using a Dictionary to Define Inflation Can Spell Trouble.” Lahart writes that up until 2003, Webster’s defined inflation as printing money. Since the 2003 edition, Webster’s defines inflation as “a continuing rise in the general price level.” Mainstream economists say that only those out-of-step define inflation as increased money creation. “They were quite far behind the times,” says Harvard economist Greg Mankiw. In his widely used economics textbook, he defines inflation simply as “an increase in the overall level of prices in the economy.” Lahart traces the I-word back to 1755 when “The state of being swelled with wind; flatulence,” defined inflation. In 1864, Webster’s American Dictionary of the English Language defined inflation as “undue expansion or increase, from over-issue; — said of currency.” And so on from there until 2003. “This semantic innovation is by no means harmless,” Mises wrote in Planning for Freedom. Mises points out that it’s impossible to fight an evil that you can’t name. The public gets lost when a detailed analysis is required and continually referring to this analysis is bothersome, besides being ineffective. “As you cannot name the policy increasing the quantity of the circulating medium, it goes on luxuriantly,” Mises wrote. However, what is most damaging is that when policy makers fight the consequences of inflation–a rise in prices–they make matters worse, not realizing “the causal relation between the increase in money in circulation and credit expansion on the one hand and the rise in prices on another.” Mr. Lahart writes that “there has been a shift in American thinking of the purpose of dictionaries: Rather than defining words as some experts thought they should be used, dictionaries have moved toward defining words as people actually use them.” So what we have is a generation of people (economists and otherwise) who don’t understand what inflation is. When questioned about rising gasoline prices, Fed Chair Ben Bernanke said during the Federal Reserve’s first press conference.

This is a very adverse development. It accounts for almost all of the inflation. There’s not much the Federal Reserve can do about gas prices, per se, without derailing growth entirely. The Fed cannot create more oil. What we can do is basically try to keep higher gas prices from passing into other prices and wages, and creating a broader inflation that would be harder to extinguish. Our view is that gas prices will not continue to rise at the recent pace. That will provide some relief on the inflation front.

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Recent
Comments

Borrow and hope
"God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, Courage to change the things I can, And wisdom to know the difference."
Hey, the budget is better than I expected... Pretty irresponsible to put so much weight on forecasts from the same people who routinely demonstrate their incompetence, but it's a baby step in the right direction.
Those projections coming from Treasury are nothing short of outright lies. Those numpties cost the taxpayers upward of $4 billion per year. I have had it. It will be a vote for ACT and the Libertarians for me in November. If they don't get enough votes to govern then me and my money are hitting the road..I will not put up with the waste and borrow and bullshit any longer.
perhaps he's hoping to fund it all by selling the CHCH CBD that Brownlee is planning to steal off the current owners.

1.9% inflation...4.5% wage growth...4% GDP growth...170k new jobs...

as if
Cheer up, Newstalk ZB just finished quoting Adam Smith and now they're attacking Ben Bernanke and the Fed for printing money. RT @peteremcc
You can't fly with the eagles, when the majority keep voting for turkeys.
Your approach seems to be the only sane/ rational one to take.I'm pretty sure I heard, in amongst the extra spending on train sets, maori language and Uncle Tom Cobbley's piles, that they were going to use taxpayers money for "Social Capital". I'm sure I'm not still in the 1970's.Peter
A pity the Dipton, Double Dipping, Dipstick didn't remember his Dickens.To quote Mr. Micawber "income One Pound, expenditure Nineteen Shillings, blissful happiness; expenditure, One Pound and Sixpence,misery.

Borrow and Hope.What is the interest on $ 4 billion,compounding until 2014.
As possessive nouns, the name of this blogpost might describe the stage names of our comedy duo leaders.
‘Perigo!’ show tonight: Peter Leitch
I have really enjoyed following the Perigo! shows via your YouTube liks, thanks PC.

Is there any chance that this one will be put up as a link or on YouTube by TBGONZ?
What a really enjoyable interview it was to watch. (Usually Sir Mad Butcher's grating voice and constant "mate"s rather annoy).I'm sure Sir Peter would not be classed as [part of] Sheeple, yet he expressed quite a few sheeple ideas.Stephen
Here is the TBGONZ link:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-lJuXoIpaY
Oh thank you for the link, Anonymous. Are you TBGONZ....? If so, many thanks, if not then I hope TBGONZ reads this and accepts my felicitations :)
Who am I? [updated]
You forgot - "I'm the politician who in a knee jerk reaction to a tragedy, rather than correct the problems within my portfolio that allowed the tragedy to occur, put huge expense and inconvenience on law abiding firearms owners - who were never the problem in the first place".

Paranormal
I'm so liberal I voted against Homosexual Law Reform in 1985, now I'm standing for the "liberal party".

However, to be fair the motorway he promoted was on land long set aside and purchased for the purpose - he gold-plated it to being not worth doing.
As I constantly point out to all the ACToids, there's barely gold leaf between Banks and ACT's other self-made man, John Boscawen. But do you hear them complain about John? Nope, not a peep. They're either too worried about one John, or not worried enough about the other.
...and as I also like to remind people, Saint Ruth of Richardson also voted against homosexual law reform, so stop whining.
But did Ruth or Boscowen ever wax lyrical about shoving barbed wire up gays anus's though?
NOT PJ: One Mississippi, No Mississippi
"... it would make the chaos of Hurricane Katrina look like a perfectly scripted tour of a clockwork factory"

Brilliant! :-)
Old Man River changing course would make less of a mess of the American landscape than your analogies make of Not PC's elegant blog.

But well put!
Kinetower, by Kinetura
beautiful building building but metal or plastic fatigue will mean the building's maintenance budget will have to be in the order of 20% within a very short period
I wonder how much some poor person (or probably more likely taxpayer) would need to pay for this ridiculous architects' wet dream.
GUEST POST: Ben Bernanke. Idiot?
i don't blieve the man is an idiot at all, The actions he is overseeing may seem idiotic, but he is not an idiot.I believe that his actions are actually from a different paradigm completely. His actions need to be looked at in respect of who he is actually benefitting with the results of his actions.What I don't believe is that he is playing an and game where the beneficiaries are the populace at large. The results of his actions so far have resulted in massive governmental indebtedness, massive private indebtedness, and now we are starting to see massive asset valuation degeneration (US housing stock is devaluing for the 4-5th yr in a row, with regards to company valuations if valued in gold, they have decreased/ stagnated for 10 years).Who wins in this scenario?The creditors.Who are the creditors?The FED is a private entity, not owned by the govt, and yet they have the power to print their own currency, with which they are buying govt overspends (debt) in the form of bonds.I believe that Bernank is actually transferring massive amounts of wealth via junk bonds issued at huge discounts to a gullible populace, with the intent to saturate their indebtedness to the point of bankruptcy, and only then will they turn around and start to receive the true benefit the initial investment has been aiminng to achieve. Essentially they are trying to force the population to become debt serfs.They will achieve this by starting to increase the scews with interest rate hikes. We are already seeing Greece fall into the trap. Many other nations are bordering on Greece's abyss. Austerity will be the name of the game, national assets will be sold for wholesale prices in order to pay back some of the debt.The population will be forced to pay more for the products of the assets, like electricity (the whole AGW thing is just another ruse to milk higher prices from these assets before they are repossessed by the FED's etc shareholders).Answer the question as to who Bernank's real masters are and you will see who wins with his actions.Unfortunately, unless we start playing the game the way the his paymasters play, we will be headed for debt serfdom via higher taxes to pay off govt debt and the interest payments that bebt demands, higher consumable commodity prices, and ultimately lower investment returns too.There will probably be a play soon to denude people of their retirement investments, and it will happen simply by a massive correction in stockmarket prices.My advice would be,liquidate what you can now, get some gold/silver and hide it somewhere safe for the next 2 years, then come out all guns blazing and buy the cheapest highest yeilding assets you can get you hands on and then just ride the sharks back, because they will drive the income from those adjusted assets so they can yeild 30% + ROI when the great transfer has been given time to bed in.
In other words one should read "The fatal conceit".
Vedran Vuk said...If we get the equation right, we can take the economy to some perfect equilibrium.

Aha! That's your mistake there. There is no equilibrium that exists in the market whatsoever! How did we know that? Psychic dreams? Angels told us? Perhaps the astrologists? Nope! BUT HOW? Are you ready? ANSWER : Mathematical equations. Yep, that's right mathematical equations. We can't know our environment without mathematical laws.

Bernarke? He believes in equilibrium (which is false). Mathematical Equation is not the problem. Wrong formulation (ie, wrong premises) is. Ladies & gentlemen, this is what is wrong with mainstream economics. Wrong premises & formulations rather than wrong equations.

Can you see the difference?

I hope you do.

All pens down, that's all for today folks. Until then, keep walking on the right hand side of the road on your way home and be careful. We will see you back here tomorrow with our new topics on non-equilibrium economics.
I would like to add another important point that's seems missing from Austrian anti-mathematics proponents in economics theories.

If everything else is eliminated, such as Govt interfering in the free markets, Govt subsidies, blah, blah, blah, and the world economies will be left unregulated (which is what is should be as a free market proponents like myself), crises will still exist. The reason is because economic agents exists. They interact, they trade, they watch each others' moves and react accordingly, etc, etc,... All these dynamics in their actions lead to near equilibrium. This translates into system instability. The further away from equilibrium, the more unstable it is. This takes regardless if the system is based on Austrian or Keynesian philosophies. To stop instability in its entirety is to froze interaction amongst economic agents completely. Don't trade, don't exchange, each produce for themselves and not sell their products to others, etc,... The real world doesn't work that way.

I think that an Austrian based economic system will be better, but it doesn't mean that crises will disappear. It is generic. Crises in such system may not be severe compared to other crises as we're seeing today Keynesian based philosophies, but the fact is, crises will not be totally eliminated as long as each agent interacts with each other.
@FF: Not for the first time, FF, you're attacking a straw man.

Vedran did not say, "If we get the equation right, we can take the economy to some perfect equilibrium" in order to endorse it.

He said it to paraphrase the idiocy of people who think it can be done.

I think perhaps you should re-read the piece--and also find out what Austrian economics does say, instead of criticising what you think it says.
PC, this is what Mr Vuk said further down in his post?

Scientists and mathematicians often falsely believe the world is just another equation to solve.

Can Mr Vuk state clearly of why scientists and mathematicians should not falsely believe the world is just another equation to solve? This assertion is based on what? Opinions or empirical facts? Which one?
QUOTE OF THE DAY: “The difference between rich and poor is more than it should be.”
“I believe what hampers and distorts the distribution of wealth and salaries … is government.
GUEST POST: Watt a Genius
Right, the industrial revolution made everyone richer, rather than just the factory owners, because they shared their personal wealth right? with the people who lost their jobs right? I'm not advocating some kind of return to a pre industrial era, but please, who are you kidding? obviously yourself, but how many people are stupid enough to believe that pile of crap... come on.
DOWN TO THE DOCTOR’S: Child Abusers of the Mind Confronted On Steps Of Parliament
QUOTE OF THE DAY: On bureaucrats
Climate agit-prop in the Listeria
Pamela Stirling is taking the Listener down (in terms of market share) slowly into its death bed. If I was the owner, I would have sacked the bitch a few years back. I used to subscribe, but I have dropped it 2 years ago due to its bad quality and tabloid bullshit sensationalizing stories that they published regularly.

I think that the owners of Listener should sack the bitch now.Is the CO2 effect saturated?What affect clouds have on warming
This entire post has little, if any, scientific backing. For a start, clouds have multiple effects, one of them being the entrapment of gases in the atmosphere. Also, saying that C02 is only comprising a certain level of the atmosphere without stating what it is supposed to be is just plain unscientific. It doesn't matter if the levels SOUND small, the fact that they have risen at a catastrophic rate is having adverse effects on the earth.
Bloody brilliant!

BTW, gazzamuso, clouds are made up of water vapour - that's H2O to you - not CO2. And incidentally, your last sentence doesn't even make sense. I assume you are saying "[CO2 levels] have risen at a catastrophic rate is having adverse effects on the earth." What "adverse effects" and what evidence is there of any cause and effect?

And interesting comments in response to the study you quote Rimu "The figure in this article is out going radiance but is only part of the actual figure from the Harris 2001 paper. It has been manipulated to highlight the drops in radiance CO2 and CH4. I'm not trying to suggest dishonesty it's just a way to present the data."

The usual story.
Rupert just ripped Pamela's toy away from her.
Skepticalscience.com is skeptical science... as much as the Catholic Church is a skeptical scientific institution. The both offer homilies for the faithful to use in defence of the word of Mann/God.

Onward climate soldiers marching as to war, with the hockeystick of Mann going on before...
This excellent article puts it far better than I could have done... but I have been saying on blogs and on talkback for years that it is absolutely ridiculous to think that small changes in the amounts of an already infinitesimal trace gas (CO2) could have a disasterous effect on climate. It just makes no sense at all. Its what is more politely called 'counterintuitive' - or in other words 'stupid'.

This proposition alone should be sufficient to laugh the warmists out of business. But WHY on earth has almost the whole population of the western world embraced this stupidity to almost religious levels? I don't get it.
Excellent email, and I am in complete agreement with the points contained within. However *wink* I want a certain question answered because it is very important (and clarifies I debate I have been having with my offsider most of the afternoon) and it is this: who the f**k names their child "Rupert"??!?!?!!?! ha ha!
@Elijah

Who the f**k names their kid "Elijah"?!

Or "Lineberry"?!

Go Rupert is all I'll say!

The Listener used to be a good read. I've stopped reading it a few years ago fir the same reason as Sylvia. It's turned to tabloid trash.

Rufus
John Boy must have blown *all* the candles out this time [updated]
"Wishful thinking" is an extremely generous turn of phrase Peter. I would feel little compunction to use the term "fraudulent" or perhaps "highly deceptive", as the positive prognostications are not attached to any serious plan to substantially turn the economy around,or better, provide a path to get the government out of the way. Judging by the little information available, there is no such plan in any shape or form.
Why Progress Needs Ideas
You heard it here first, folks! -was writing solopassion.com posts about this 4 years ago, *wink* but delighted the 'little people' have finally caught up with their master... ha ha!
ECONOMICS FOR REAL PEOPLE: Global Financial Crisis
Financial crisis is generic. It will always happen with or without the Feds existence. It means that even if Gold Standard is brought back or the Feds is abolished tomorrow according to the wish of Ron Paul, crises will still take place in the future.

The question is, how it can be minimized and I think that this is when Austrian Economics can come in. If Austrian economic thoughts are being implemented worldwide, then perhaps crises will be minimized, but don't dream it is going to eliminate crises completely because it is a wishful thinking. All complex systems (be it economics, biological, physical, etc,...) do undergo phase transition occasionally (ie, an abrupt change or a discontinuous jump) as physicists calls them. Either there is an external cause (exogenous) or an internal cause (endogenous).

There were even crises in the last century even before the establishment of the Feds in 1913. That shows that crises will always take place in a complex system because it is intrinsic to it. It is simply the way it is.
The following is also useful too.

Bubble trouble
Smith to campers: “Go, Move, Shift” [updated]
What would you do about people who leave human waste where they camp?

It's revolting, it's a growing problem and not just in rural areas.
Yes, clearly the only thing to be done to stop a small number of people poohing where they camp is to prohibit camping altogether for everyone.

Makes perfect sense. Like banning speech because a few of you talk nonsense.
Your not suggesting people should be free to pooh anywhere are you?

What's a "small" enough number to make pooh in the wrong place acceptable?

The proposed law change doesn't prohibit camping altogether. People with self-contained loos will be able to camp almost anywhere; those without will be able to camp where there are loos.

To use your example of speech - this isn't the equivalent of just spouting nonsense it's offensive language and there are restrictions on where you can use that.
Your not . . . shoud be you're not . . . .
The road rules for free traveling are obvious and simple,leave no mess, and buy from local merchant.I do this in Australia, out of my campervan and consequently I never have problems.The police ignore me European men in New Zealand especially, and couples come to New Zealand with an intolerable arrogance, They do not recognize us, and they need to be sorted out.

Most of my friends agree with a visitor tax, to alleviate the shit that tourist low classleave and dissipate.This tax is easily imposed at borders, and would not interfere with higher quality tourists whoContribute to New Zealand.Pay here tourist,
How often do people pull over into your driveway and dump, Peter?

I refuse to believe I have offended the touring world's sensibilities, so it's not personal, just a convenient place to overnight and shit out of sight of the road.

George
will the council inspectors now be on the prowl to tax people who want to provide pay-for-service latrines for campers' effluent discharges?

the problem of freedom camping became an issue with hiring of van's which are not fitted with portapottees, so wouldn't a better answer have been to have the van's carry a portapottee (just make it part of the WoF for that kind of vehicle).
Perigo! Show 8: Don Brash, Round Two
Mr Perigo needs a shave. That makes him looks like a serious interviewer. Anyway, I like his interview, but he needs to work on his appearance style.
I think that all Libz members give their party votes to ACT and support Don Brash. It is better to do that than wasting your votes voting for Libz.
Will the new ACT use it's influence to have overall government spending cut? To repeal laws or regulations infringing individual liberty? To repeal laws or regulations favouring some market participants over others?

No it will not.

All of it's political capital will be spent fighting for the elimination of Maori seats and reworking the F&S bill. Personally, it is not important to me that Maori get an unfair share of the pork; I want the pig to be crippled. Dr Brash will acheive nothing worthwhile, but will cause the public to link small government ideals with racism. Not too old, just too stupid.
Just to be clear, big government does not favour everyone equally. Far more unwarranted privilege would be tackled by banning arts graduates from public office than by attacking Maori competitive advantage in politics. The only way to undermine privilege generally however, is the reduce the size of government. It is not how the spoils of robbery are shared amongst thieves that matters, it is acting to prevent robbery.
Perigo! Show 7: The ‘Atlas Shrugged’ Special
I agree....this was his best show yet. Ayn rand was very inspirational.
oops...didn't mean to show off, but all those abbreviations were remembered by the computer Name/URL from a previous comment on the Architect's old boys club
GUEST POST: A Counterfactual Look at Inflation [updated]
Good post. Sketching the real issues in just a few sentences. Should have added what the basis of inflation really is, and how we're being hoodwinked by falsified inflation measures.
That's what I mean.
Sunday Stupidity: On Faith
Not something to base real world decisions by?

Then I trust that you never start a business from scratch.

And even if you buy an existing successful business - there is nothing to guarantee similar or better results for YOU as the new proprietor.

If we base our premise on the fact that nobody starts a business to fail, then faith in oneself to succeed is the only thing one does have.
"The alleged short-cut to knowledge, which is faith, is only a short-circuit destroying the mind."

If that statement is true then I wonder why Faraday and Newton weren't atheists? Gregor Mendel even.

Rand is a boring, grossly overrated pseudo-philosopher. I just can't fathom why you libtards hold her musings with such rigid, cult-like ideological reverence.
Shauna,

New businesses (Successful ones at least) are not started on blind faith, but on evidence gathered from trends and research. Applied over this is experience, logic, and forecasting methods, which are known and that can be, and have been, tested.

Nowhere does blind faith come into the equation.
But they didn't use the rabbit's foot while doing the actual science, Anonymous.
I didn't say 'blind faith', Dolf. I said 'faith in oneself'.

You can research trends/statistics etc and perform due diligence as much as you wish - and you'd be mad not to, prior to purchase - but I stand by my third paragraph.
I guess we'll all find out once and for all on Sunday, when the 12 million get beamed up (or not). I'm picking not - but what would I know?